This weekend I took part in a Digital Festival created by some friends of mine based in Dundee. This online event, named CreativiTay, aimed to encourage people within the lockdown to do something creative, and challenged all those willing to participate to create anything during the 24 hour event, whether it is to do with writing, art, music or even textiles and performance art. The festival also had the goal of raising money for the Tayside Health Fund, to help support the NHS during this difficult time. Their original goal was to raise £500, but my the end of the 24 hour stream they had managed to raise an amazing £1151 for the charity which was a fantastic result!
For my contribution to the event, I decided to set myself the task of trying to symbolise and depict life in quarantine through creative photography, aiming to teach myself some new editing techniques throughout the day. Up until now I have only every really used Adobe Photoshop for editing when it comes to lighting and colour effects, and the rest of the software's features always seemed pretty daunting in all honesty. However, for this event I decided to go out of my comfort zone and try out some new techniques that I have really wanted to try, and I must say I am very pleased with the results.
Firstly, I decided the main technique I wanted to learn was that of Double Exposure. With this technique I essentially I took a portrait photograph and blended it with another photograph to create a silhouette-style photo. I wanted to use double exposure because it occurred to me that many of us may spend time during this lockdown thinking about all the places we would like to go when its all over, and how much we took those places for granted before all of this happened, I know I do. Therefore, I thought this technique would be a great way to show what kind of places we think about and to symbolise our feelings and wishes during this lockdown.
All the photos used in this project were taken by me; the portrait photographs are either of myself or my partner Nathan who was willing to help me with my vision, and all the landscape photos are places that mean something to us respectively. This is with the intention of showing the places we are thinking about during this time, and the places we hope to visit once we are allowed out and about again.
You can see all of these photos from this double exposure series in the slideshow below:
After completing this part of the project, I felt quite confident with using this technique so I decided to move on and try another method known as the Dispersion effect.
The Dispersion effect is a common effect used in Photoshop in order to disperse particles and give a "splattered" look to objects or people. I decided to use this effect to try and convey thoughts that go through people's heads when they are in quarantine, specifically thoughts of activities that could be done to occupy your time. I have personally found that I have spend a lot of time thinking of things to do during this extra time at home; there is no guarantee I will do all of these things, but I think of them as things that should be done so I don't get bored, or to avoid me going back to the cupboard for that 3rd snack. I then thought about what other people might consider doing, so I asked my partner what kind of activities he thinks about during quarantine to keep him occupied. Finally, I took these ideas and merged them along with my newly learnt dispersion technique to create a couple of pieces that covered these thoughts and activities of quarantine, which can be seen below:
You may find some of the thoughts are fairly similar, mundane tasks such as doing dishes, washing and buying groceries that everyone will probably be thinking about doing to make good use of their time in the house. However other thoughts are intended to be unique to the personality of each person in the photo, with one thinking about online shopping and yoga while the other is thinking about playing games and reading, both specific to our individual personalities.
You can also find a closer up version of the dispersion effect created for each of these photos below:
In the first one I went for a more minimal dispersion due to the size of the area I was scattering and the tone of the photo, while for the second one I went for a more dramatic dispersion to work with the slightly different tone and the larger area being dispersed.
Other than dispersion and double exposure, I also spent time during the festival looking at other editing techniques such as layering, adding elements and painting. While not all my endeavours were successful, I am happy to have tried them because now I know more about the editing possibilities there are available to me, and I know I will continue working on all these methods until I get them right.
I am so glad I took part in this festival as it gave me a great reason to explore new creative photography methods and it gave me the encouragement and motivation I needed to do broaden my range and move away from my normal style for a little while. It also helped me to feel more confident with using Photoshop, and more confident in my own creative ability, which I am extremely happy about.
Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed the article. If you have any questions about these processes, my ideas or my work please do not hesitate to get in touch through the contact details provided on my website or through my Social Media pages.
Stay safe, and please do remember to show your appreciation for our wonderful Health workers and NHS during this time!
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